Wednesday, May 9, 2007

Cycle 1, Day 1 of Hannah's 9 cycles of chemotherapy started today. We are now at Schneider Children's Hospital and Hannah has received her first two chemo drugs. Amazingly enough, no immediate effect, in fact she asked for more chicken for dinner so she is feeling good right now. Like all other places, our check-in process was slow and a bit frustrating at times, but once we got up to the oncology ward all has gone smoothly. We had our own room when we first got here, but now we have a roommate and all beds are full. There are 18 total beds here, with a few of them isolation beds. So far the nurses are very nice, and everything else seems pretty run-of-the-mill. At least now the anticipation of the unknown is over for the time being and the mysterious "chemo" has begun.

According to the plan, Hannah will get 9 cycles of chemotherapy. There are really three different cycles- 1, 2 and 3, each of those are different in terms of the drugs, then they repeat a total of 3 times, for 9 cycles total. It is not actually 9 months long, because the cycles are either 21 or 29 days long, so if she stays on the plan, we will be done before Christmas. That sounds so much better than February! But, we have been told that almost no child can make it through the entire sequence without changes, either to drugs or dosage or timing, so it is a rough estimate of what is to come.

So for the next 5 days, we're here trying to keep busy. Hannah will have either hydration or chemo the entire time we are here, so she is attached to the IV pole. She has already learned how to ride the pole instead of walk down the hall, and we'll have fun with that until someone tells us it's not allowed. She can go anywhere on the floor with the pole, but can not go off the floor. It's a good thing we'll only be here for 5 days, because we are used to roaming about at will, down to the gift shop or outside for a walk. Five days is workable for us. I have already gotten the "I'm bored," so I'm going to be hopping while we're here trying to keep her busy and interested.

I hope to post some pictures later, but for now the camera is on my "I forgot" list. Until then, you can imagine her happy, smiling and eating popsicles.

xoxo
Kim and Hannah